Bring on the border wars

A good number of years ago now, my Wisconsin born-and-bred buddy Tom and I drove from Milwaukee to the Twin Cities to catch a Packers-Vikings game.

Brett Favre was still a Packer at the time, but he looked like he was already considering defecting. Perhaps preoccupied with texting the cheerleaders, he forgot who he was really supposed to be passing to, and the Packers suffered a painful, humiliating loss.

Tom later became a war correspondent in Afghanistan and knows a little bit about conflict. But even he found it laughingly cruel when, puttering dejectedly back along Highway 94 on the Wisconsin side of the St. Croix River, we passed underneath an enormous banner strung over the highway.

"LOSERS GO HOME!"

I bring this up now because there is some consternation in Wisconsin of late about the so-called "border wars."

On the one side of the war is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Wisconsin economic development leaders who have unveiled a new $500,000 "In Wisconsin" ad campaign aimed at least partly at companies in Illinois and Minnesota.

On the other side are the folks who have been kicking our derrieres for years in the Twin Cities and the Chicago area as well as, believe it or not, some uber-polite citizens here in the Badger State who seem to think it's just not right to overtly try to steal business from our neighbors.

The Beloit paper went so far as to run an editorial warning us not to call Illinoisans "Fibs" and admonishing us to be careful about picking fights. The editorial reminded us that we get a lot of tourism dollars from down south and opined that "it's important to be good neighbors."

Meanwhile, something called the OECD, an organization that either stands for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development or, I suspect, Organization for Extending Chicago's Domination, recently took some aggressive Wisconsinites to the woodshed.

The OECD (which is actually based in France) argued that southeastern Wisconsin belongs to an emerging megacity, and criticized the "destructive" and "self-defeating" attempts of some Wisconsin economic development folks to coax Illinois companies up here.

The Associated Press reported the other day that Walker has unveiled a new $500,000 "In Wisconsin" ad campaign that specifically targets companies and so-called "site selectors" (people who help business choose where to locate) in Illinois and the Twin Cities.

That's true, although when I called Tom Thieding, communications manager for the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., he downplayed any sort of war.

While he conceded the initiative includes "a little bit of a border strategy" and placement of ads in other state's publications, he added that the main focus is letting small Wisconsin businesses know their state wants to help them grow.

Yes, there are billboards going up near Superior and Kenosha and near Eau Claire, but also away from the borders in places like the Fox Valley. And the campaign basically just promotes already-successful Wisconsin businesses by showing they exist "In Wisconsin" rather than, say, explicitly ridiculing our neighbors for teacher strikes and high taxes. Which is too bad.

I've lived in both Illinois and Minnesota. If Wisconsin had all of Illinois' current problems, Illinois officials would have welcoming committees at the borders and signs saying "Come on Over!" If we had more companies worth stealing, Minnesota wouldn't hesitate for a second to put Brett Favre on TV in a purple suit and try to suck them down the same path to the west he once followed.

Meanwhile, we worry a paltry $500,000 ad campaign is going to cause somebody to think a bad thought about us.

We need to be more aggressive in stealing as much business as possible. We're too nice. "Cheesehead" shouldn't be synonymous with "Chump."

You don't need a banner to know that.

Mike Nichols is a syndicated columnist, author and senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. The views expressed in his column are his own. Reach him at MRNichols@wi.rr.com.

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Bring on the border wars

A good number of years ago now, my Wisconsin born-and-bred buddy Tom and I drove from Milwaukee to the Twin Cities to catch a Packers-Vikings game. Brett Favre was still a Packer at the time, but he

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